Five Horrific Questions with Alex Mann of ‘Detention of the Dead’

The final entry in our Five
Horrific Questions series arrives just in time for Halloween. To send us
off shaking, shivering and quaking in our boots, we turn to Alex Mann.

Mann is the executive producer, co-writer and director of Detention
of the Dead, a “zombedy,” as Mann calls it, that pits a group of high
schoolers trapped in detention against their zombie classmates. It’s his first
feature, much of which was shot in and around Pontiac, Mich.

“It's now available in most of the major territories of the
world,” Mann says. “The journey to get to this point is only comparable to
running two or three marathons in a row and then climbing Mt.Everest
in storm! What I learned about filmmaking and myself in that process is
invaluable, and has made me a better man and artist.”

Alex Mann: We all
have experienced fear triggered by the unknown, or a sudden startling, or a
threat to our lives, or anything that ignites our flight or fight syndrome.
In a movie, it's a simple matter of the filmmakers recreating such
circumstances in such a way that an audience can relate. It's the
patron's suspension of disbelief coupled with the engagement of their
imagination and visceral connection that makes a movie scary. Ironically, it's
the audience member that creates the fear.

Alex Mann: Keep
in mind, my horror comedy or really campy comedy horror or Zombedy, Detention
of the Dead, isn't scary, nor is it meant to be. However, if I were
to study a filmmaker to learn how best to make a horror film, then I'd study
Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.

MMM: Why do we like to be
scared?

Alex Mann: In
order to get the adrenalin rush we might get from jumping out of an airplane
without the risk of jumping out of an airplane.

MMM: What movie would you
like to turn into a horror movie? And how would you do it?

Alex Mann: I did
that with The Breakfast Club
being the inspiration for Detention of
the Dead. Perhaps, it would be fun to take another 80s film, like Better Off Dead,
and do something darker with it by making the lead more genuinely suicidal,
remove the tongue and cheek writing, and cinematically add a surreal quality.

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